A quarter of a century ago it was stated that no serious academic historian takes seriously any more the claim of genocide in relation to Britain’s role in the Famine. It may be time to debate that assertion again.

Christopher Hitchens was famously sceptical of the claims of religious thinkers, yet faced with dying he exhibited a defiant faith in the capacities of medical science to block the course of nature, a faith not sustained by much evidence.

Yeats, Eliot and Pound were the three dominant figures in the remaking of early twentieth century English poetry. Though they managed to maintain friendships, each of them was, to a significant degree, deaf to rhythms other than their own.

The collection of early children’s books bequeathed to Trinity College library by the late Mary Pollard is an invaluable resource but its value to scholars is being diminished by cuts in funding, cuts which indeed affect the entire library sector in the state.

In April 1847 a vessel departed from Charlestown naval yard with eight hundred tons of relief supplies for the people of the city and county of Cork, paid for by the people of Boston and other towns in Massachusetts.